


Love (and other contact sports)

by sifuamelia



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Fluffy Ending, M/M, Mild Language, Post-Season/Series 06, Reunions, Unresolved Tension
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-07-16
Updated: 2018-07-16
Packaged: 2019-06-11 08:18:45
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,834
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15311328
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sifuamelia/pseuds/sifuamelia
Summary: Keith thinks that Lance has watched “When Harry Met Sally” just a few too many times.





	Love (and other contact sports)

Many, many moons ago — well, maybe not _that_ many, they haven’t been stuck in space for  _that_ long — Lance Esteban McClain Acosta de la Cruz decided to nickname a robot. And not in a cutesy way, not like how Pidge nicknamed her retrofitted Galra ‘bot (rest in peace, Rover — you were one good boy).

No. _This_ nickname had been bestowed in a  _completely_ nonsensical fashion. Which, in a completely sensical way, actually _makes_ sense, because it’s _Lance_ , but—

Keith dips into a harried backbend, avoiding yet another potential concussion by just a harshly-drawn breath’s space. _Shit._ He’d forgotten how fast these Altean gladiator droids can move. Even though this one seems to be an older model than the one that he'd originally fought against — back in the good old days, when he wasn't half-Galra and didn't have a scar to rival Shiro's — it’s still giving him a decent run for his money.

But with a neat twist of his hips, he’s (1) jumped back onto the balls of his feet and (2) rammed the belligerent program directly in the middle of its soulless forehead with the heel of the black bayard. The ‘bot’s single eye flickers, and then it powers off, slumping into the wall just next to the training room’s blinking control console.

Keith takes a cue from the downed droid and lets his own worn-out body sag to the floor, too, dropping the bayard with a careless clatter as he rubs vehemently at his dripping face with the collar of his undershirt. _Gross—_

Somebody’s clapping. Slow. Measured. It’s coming from the far corner, where there’s one of those swishy sliding space doors (another eerily familiar feature of this otherwise strange place). Good thing Keith’s already sitting — he would’ve fallen over in shock if he’d still been standing. He’d really thought himself alone that entire time—

_Aw, **hell**._

“Well, well, well,” Lance — because of _course_ that’s who it is — crows between his claps. They sound more like slaps. Slaps straight to Keith’s tired, _tired_ ears.

“What,” Keith grits out between clenched teeth. It isn’t a question. More like a curse at every single star and planet and solar system in the universe that he's had to fight back for, over and over and over again.

Lance, to his credit, seems to notice the many warning signs sparking from every spiny and sharp facet of Keith’s entire exterior. He might as well be wearing a _KEEP OUT_ sign around his chest, like some kind of punk-metal necklace, maybe. It'd be an unfashionable statement, sure, but at least he'd always be able to make his socializing preferences uncontestedly clear, not a lick of precious oxygen wasted in the process.

The other boy stops just shy of him, but he doesn’t sit on the matted floor, not yet. Probably a good move for personal hygiene — anybody with a pair of working eyeballs can tell that the room’s _heavily_ dusty floors, left to their solitude for tens of thousands of years, deserve the deepest of cleans — but Keith knows Lance, and Keith knows that what's _really_ keeping Lance hovering above him like this is the fact that the other boy is having a pretty serious identity crisis over their joint realization that post-time wastes Keith is now slightly taller than him. He’d done a right fittin’ and spittin’ (Keith's dad had always used that expression) about the injustice of it all as soon as they’d landed within the dormant security of this abandoned Altean outpost on the farthest throes of the Quna’ati System, Sector B7.

With the help of the others, Keith had made sure that Shiro would have an adequate place to rest over the following few quintants while they get their bearings and plot out their next move. Take a quick, much-needed breather from fighting sadistic purple psychopaths, and all that jazz. For the team, their five magical warships would always provide comfort and familiarity... but their cockpit chairs aren’t exactly the best places to recover from the little hiccups in life. Little hiccups like, having your dying soul spiritually transferred into your evil clone's body.

Just another average day of defending the universe.

Right now, though, Keith wants nothing more than to be left alone in the kind of space that he knows best up here — Altean training rooms don’t seem to vary too much, whether they’re situated onboard a royal castle ship or crammed into the center of a long-forgotten base, lonelier than even the largely unmapped stars that it’s surrounded by.

But Lance still found him anyway. Keith hates to admit it, but the other boy’s uncannily good at that. Like, _next level_ good at that.  _If only he could’ve latched onto Lotor like this, way back when… Would’ve been helpful with tracking efforts…_

“Congrats on escaping the ungodly wrath of La Chancla,” Lance says, dragging him back into the present. “She’s a fierce one. Not many survive her unbridled fury and live to tell the tale.”

And there it is again — Lance’s completely nonsensical nickname for the Altean training droids. _Lachanklah? L’channcla?_ Keith has absolutely no idea, on God’s green Earth and the immeasurably vast universe spinning wildly around it, how Lance came up with _that_ one. It kind of sounds like a Jewish holiday, but Keith’s 99.86% certain that Lance is a (lapsed) Catholic.

 _Nonsensical,_ he thinks, wholly aggravated, as he squints up at the other boy. From this angle, Lance looks far away — his hair, messier than ever, is framed by the bright white lights of the training room overhead. The way that they're cast, it almost appears as if he’s wearing a halo, all angel-like—

Keith blinks. _Hard._

“Can't you, like, go bother somebody else?” he asks, perhaps just a little too quickly.

Lance, for some blasphemous reason, seems to take that as a cue to pop a squat right next to Keith — a bit of an awkward sit, because of all of the armor involved, but they’ve all gotten used to these kinds of shuffling adjustments, for better or for worse.

“There’s nobody else to bother.” His tone sounds oddly flippant as he says it, layers upon layers of practiced casualness, and the corners of his lopsided mouth are unusually pinched.

Keith side-eyes him. “You _sure_ ‘bout that?”

Lance doesn’t look at him, just focuses on stretching out his legs in front of him. Keith may be taller now, but Lance’s legs will _always_ be longer. They go on and on and on, for miles, probably, and why they feel the need to show off like that, Keith has absolutely no idea. All that he knows is, looking them up and down for more than a few moments at a time has the tendency to stir up a little bit of something in his gut. Something that he _really_ doesn’t want to pay attention to.

“Your mom’s on a vid-call with Kolivan. Hunk and Pidge are trying to get ahold of Matt with their signal-booster thingy. Coran’s watching Shiro. And Allura’s showing Romelle around the Lions.”

Keith drags a bruised hand across his perspiring face. It doesn’t do much help in the way of drying off, seeing as his hand’s just as sweaty, but it’s the thought that counts. “Guess I’ve lucked out, then,” he deadpans.

Lance sighs dramatically, tossing his arms up high over his head before falling backward with a soft _oof!_ to the floor. Personal hygiene goes all of the way out the window as he pillows his head in his hands. “Missed you, too, Red.”

It’s entirely unexpected. It throws Keith completely off guard. Yet another thing that Lance is horrifyingly good at when it comes to Keith... and he doesn’t know how to feel about it at _all_. It usually makes his heartbeat speed up, though, when the other boy pulls this kind of alarmingly insightful shit on him—

“So. You and Romelle, huh?”

It’s almost as if Keith can _hear_ Lance’s waggling eyebrows. He fixes his glare on the blank wall across from them, not wanting to give the other boy the gleeful satisfaction of witnessing the extent of his emotional frustration. “Let’s _not_ , McClain—“

“What?” Lance prods. “She’s cute! I don’t blame you one bit for going after a girl like her.”

It’s _way_ too hot in here. Maybe this outpost isn’t climate-controlled like the castle was. Just thinking about the castle raises the smallest of lumps in his throat — sure, he hadn’t lived there for awhile, not as long as the others. Certainly not as long as Allura and Coran had. But it’d been his first home away from home... and now it’s gone.

Keith begins unbuckling his chest plate (with slightly more of a vengeance than probably required). As he goes through the motions with shaking hands, he says, “I’m not ‘going after’ her.”

“Uh-huh, _suuuuure_ —“

“Lance—“ Chest plate _off_ , thank the fucking _lord_. Maybe he'll be able to breathe again.

“You two were _totally_ eyeing each other back there—“

“ _Lance_ —“ Arm bracers, too. They need to come off, _everything_ needs to come off, or he’s going to up and suffocate to death—

“I mean, it makes sense, two _unfairly_ pretty people hooking up in the wake of the terrible tragedy that somehow brought them even closer together. Stars aligning, pure cosmic fate—“

“I’m gay!” Keith explodes. He feels like a thermostat — like one of those old mercury ones — that’s gone so hot, it’s burst and shattered, all over the floor. Plain as day for everybody to see the toxic mess that it’s made.

He’s gay... and he’s _done_. Done with — _this_. Whatever ‘this’ is. Maybe it’s this conversation. Maybe it’s everything that Lance has ever said and done within his presence (and probably a good deal of the things that he’s ever said and done without his presence).

Maybe, it’s just Lance Esteban McClain Acosta de la Cruz himself.

Belatedly, he realizes that Lance has sat back up. Keith had meant to get out and away, to go anywhere but here, but he’s still stuck to the floor. The dusty-ass floor. Pinned there by the heart-stopping weight of Lance’s scary-ass stare.

Every time that Keith looks into those eyes, they seem bluer, somehow. Not a light blue, not an ocean blue, just… _blue_. Deeper than one would expect from a guy like Lance.

But Keith knows Lance. He knows that out of all of Lance’s countless siblings, he’s closest with Verónica, because apparently, they share a “super-special twin-powered hive mind.” He knows that Lance was still sleeping with his childhood shark stuffy in his Garrison bunk. He knows that the entire Acosta clan, from every single corner of the globe, reunites in Miami each Christmas, and Lance’s abuelita always makes her “world-famous” garlic knots. When Lance was nine, he ate twelve, threw them all up, and then promptly ate twelve more — Keith knows that, too.

And Keith knows that Lance misses Vero more than anything, and that Jeremy-the-shark-stuffy was always there to ward off the lurking threat of nighttime panic attacks. And Keith knows that at Christmastime, just a few months ago, the other boy disappeared for the entire holiday with no explanation whatsoever, completely missing out on the surprisingly edible holiday feast that Hunk had prepared from some of the local Unilu market’s gnarliest space ingredients.

Keith knows all of these things for a reason. And as he and Lance face-off, cross-legged and cramped, with nowhere else to move but forward…

“Nice to meet you, Gay,” the other boy says, every single plane and angle of his entire (leggy-ass) self somehow laid stoic and serious. “I'm Lance.” And he actually reaches out his still-gloved hand. For a fucking _shake_.

Keith looks down at the proffered hand. He looks back up at Lance. And he makes a choice.

And Lance — _Lance kisses him back_. Almost immediately. A little too eagerly, maybe, given the glaring fact that Keith hadn’t asked for a single bit of his permission (oops) _and_ knows that Lance is probably still harboring his thing for Allura (double oops).

“I-I’m sor—“ Keith gasps into Lance’s hot mouth.

“Don’t,” Lance gasps back, effectively shutting him up with a tug of his teeth on Keith’s lower lip. “Don’t you dare.“

“I just—“ he tries again, pathetically helpless in the _ridiculously_ pleasurable face of this whole biting thing.

Lance grabs at him, hands scrabbling, gloves off, pulling, _pulling_ — Keith’s in his lap, now. Chest-to-chest — so close. _Too_ close — Keith’s heart swoops in said chest. Deeper than a barrel roll in Red, faster than the speed of sound, of _light_ —

“Don’t you dare apologize for this, Keith Kogane,” Lance says, low into the hollow of Keith’s throat. "Don't you _dare_ —"

He shakes, right down to the very marrow of his bones, and Lance must feel it, because he promptly wraps his arms around him — one at the sweaty base of his spine (dangerously close to butt territory, but maybe it’s best not to concentrate on _that_ right now), and one at the back of his equally sweaty neck (right where his hair has become just a little bit too long, even for _his_ standards).

“You  _really_ think I like  _Romelle_?” Keith asks. He wants to sound accusatory, he _really_ does… but within the strange new realm of this sudden turn of events, that kind of thing has become nigh impossible.

“Hey, you know what they say,” Lance counters, mouth now a whole lot closer to the shell of Keith’s ear. Shiver inducing-ly close... and he sounds terribly amused. “Men and women, they can’t be ‘just friends.’”

“Sounds awfully heteronormative of you,” Keith says pointedly, trying (but probably failing) not to redden in the face of all of that smugness.

“Touché.”

“I should’ve…” He gulps. Lance can feel that, too, probably, but Keith's more than surprised to find that he doesn't really mind. Still: “I should’ve asked your permission, though. Before I did... _that_.”

Lance pulls away, but his hands never shift a single beat. One of his skinny eyebrows quirks in time with the crookedness of his smile. It’s so disarming, Keith comes to the shocking realization of why a person might do something as idiotic as swooning. “Well, retroactively speaking, I appreciate the sentiment.”

“And, like, you’ve only ever really checked out _girl_ aliens in front of me, so I always thought, maybe, y'know, your sexual preferences were never gonna, uh. Swing my way.“

That damn eyebrow quirks even further. “Sounds awfully heteronormative of you.”

“…Touché.”

Lance full-on grins at him. And for Keith, it’s like staring straight into a supernova.

“Wanna hear my two-step plan for success?” the other boy asks suddenly.

“Success is  _that_ simple?” Keith wonders suspiciously, still trying to blink off the aftereffects of the above-mentioned supernova.

“Yup,” Lance replies confidently. “One — take armor off. Two — resume making-out with the hottest guy this side of—“ He pauses. Considers. “Y'know, I was gonna say 'this side of the universe,' but if we're gonna keep up with this whole honesty thing, I should be saying 'this side of _everything_.'”

Keith rolls his eyes, _hard_ , but he’s laughing, laughing more than he has in a _shamefully_ long while as he gives Lance some breathing room to shed his own armor, too. “You… You’re _crazy_ ," he says, completely and utterly helpless to the very fact of it all. But, scarily enough, completely and utterly fine with it, too.

Funny how things can change, just like that.

“Takes one to know one,” Lance retorts as he hauls off his own chest plate. “Y'know... I think that’s why we work so well together.”

“Yeah?” Keith asks softly.

Lance’s face, brown and bony and _beautiful_ , emerges from the confines of the plate. His arms spread — Keith goes back into them as willingly as anything, all pretenses effectively abandoned where they'd defiantly stood just minutes before. As Lance nuzzles at his chin, he imagines that this must be what it’s like to come home after a long, _long_ day of taking back the universe. And _damn_ , does it feel incredible.

“We make a good team, Red,” Lance says, very simply. And he leans in to kiss Keith all over again—

But Keith pushes back, protesting. “You remember it, you _totally_ do, you aren’t fooling me one fucking _bit_ —”

Lance bites his lip, but he can’t tamper down his mischievous smile for the life of him. He plants a sloppy wet one on Keith’s cheek, much to the latter’s consternation. Naturally, it devolves into a bit of wrestling, because they’re still  _them_. And before Keith really even knows what’s happening, they’re full-on rolling around on the floor, kicking and shoving at each other, but occasionally dropping in some of the mushier stuff here and there, too. And they're _laughing_.

 _So maybe we’re **both** crazy,_ Keith thinks as he gets a precarious straddle on an indignant Lance, then proceeds to kiss his damn way across every single inch of the other boy’s lightly-freckled face. Because he finally can.

_But at least we’re together._

**Author's Note:**

> "La Chancla?" Get it?
> 
> (Am I funny yet?)


End file.
